Friday, June 10, 2011

"The Empire of Corruption is striking back"

B.S.Raghavan has a simply not to be missed opinion piece in the Hindu Business Online-

There is a sudden streak of hawkish hot-headedness evident in the Government's postures and pronouncements.

In particular, one notices the Human Resources Development and Information Technology Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, and the Home Minister, Mr P.Chidambaram, adopting a conspicuously imperial tone and tenor, which is clearly hostile to ‘We, the People', to whom they are beholden for their transient positions of power and authority in the first place. Mr Sibal has the bravado to hold up as “a lesson for all” the sneaky and dastardly Ramlila maidan rampage by the police against sleeping, innocent men, women and children who had come from far-off places just to join the movement against corruption and black money.

Mr Chidambaram has the braggadocio to denounce a sovereign people's inherent basic right to protest as “destabilising the Government” and attack the media's brilliant performance in highlighting the people's anger and revulsion against the Government's black deeds as “competitive populist coverage of these movements” and an attempt at “undermining Parliamentary democracy”.

do you hear the music of fascism? -

With all the “behave or else!” hauteur that he is capable of, he imputes motives to the media's discharge of its mandatory duty to keep the people informed, basing his insinuations on “reasons which I can't spell out”.

No doubt, he is ominously hinting at some concocted intelligence and cooked-up cases the Ministries of Home Affairs and Finance are planning to foist to subjugate the media and silence the critics.

Have the new rulers of 'free' India turned out be worse than the British-

Our rulers should know, as from an authentic witness to the glorious age of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru whom I had seen from close quarters, that they are behaving contrary to the values of colossuses who won for us our precious freedom and taking the country back to the era of slavery and savage repression by even doing one better than the British colonial masters.

Actually, the British, with the background of a thousand years of democracy in their own country, were more tolerant and responsive. They dealt with freedom fighters fairly and justly after their own fashion, and never sought to crush them with the ruthlessness that is fast becoming the established mode in the so-called democratic India.

Parties and groups playing politics with the evil of corruption and black money eating into the vitals of the nation should also understand that it has become in the people's eyes the repulsive face of politicians of all parties without exception, no matter that some of them for the nonce are jumping on to the bandwagon in the manner of one set of thieves joining the chase given by the people to catch another set of thieves.

Both fire-eating apologists for the Government's callousness, and political opportunists in the Opposition who had not lifted their little finger while they were in power, now sitting in dust-proof, noise-proof, climate proof cavernous offices, with all the creature comfort at their beck and call and spending hundreds of crores of rupees on security and healthcare must cultivate some understanding of the excruciating torture hourly inflicted on the aam aadmi in villages, towns and cities by every public servant from the traffic policeman upwards to the Cabinet Minister.

The fact that they are not able to do so shows either that they are totally devoid of humanity, blinded by their cushy existence or that they have a vested interest in perpetuating the system.